Millward brown vermeer organizational design think brand 2014 snf

MB Vermeer partnered with Google for Organizing for Marketing in a Digital Age – a thought-leadership initiative that codified best practices and practical insights into how winning teams are organizing for the evolving digital landscape. CMO Marc de Swaan Arons presented the findings to +500 senior level marketers at the Google ThinkBrand conference this October.

I am with a company called Millward Brown Vermeer. Google asked us to think through the organizational aspects, the team aspects of working with digital.

What I would like to do in the next 30 minutes is go through first – as we look through the lens of organization – what are the key opportunities and challenges. Then, share some learning from the Marketing2020 work, and introduce some benchmarking around what characterizes winners and sets them apart from the competition. And then, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t offer you a framework – which I’ll bring to life with lots of examples, so that you can apply it to your business.

I don’t think that anyone would argue that when you think about what we do in marketing, just about everything has changed. When we reached out to people to talk about organization, one thing became clear: structure follows strategy. So first, we had to talk about what is driving the organizational change.

Some of the things that people talked to us about: New touch-points: There isn’t anyone in this room that doesn’t have a competitor that is using new touch-points to do what they do well New solutions: Or a competitor using touch-points that they have or recently acquired for more and new services and solutions. The Bank of America example is a good one – depositing checks online wasn’t possible a year ago. Total brand experience: And then we have competitors that are literally saying what is our brand purpose – like, for Nike, unleashing the athlete within – and then asking can we go beyond product to offer total solutions? Redefined categories: And some of us are in categories where competitors are completely breaking the rules of the category and changing how things work. Whether you’re in hospitality and it’s AirBNB or it’s transport and it’s UBER.

An underlying factor seems to be the responsiveness – the ability to react quickly.

How many people can say about their organization like PayPal can that they were able to react to the iPhone 6 and ApplePay so quickly, the same week in the New York Times and all over Twitter?

And then transparency.

I want to show you an example. If you work on a team that works on a global brand or competes against a global brand, every day you wake up and think – I hope someone else on the other side of the earth didn’t do something really stupid that I will have to react to.

What happens when that stupid person is the CEO of the company all the way in Italy? Let me show you one video to bring this to life.

[Cue Barilla video]

…so that is Guido Barilla. He is the president and chairman of the pasta company Barilla in Italy. He seems very earnest. But this is 24 hours after he gave an interview in a local northern Italian newspaper where he made some off the cuff remark about it probably not being acceptable to use gays in their advertising.

One day later you have competitors all over the world playing up that everyone is welcome.

Speed and transparency can be a very positive thing. Patagonia, for example, has built a program where you can go into supply chain to see the origins of a jacket or shirt you buy – you can locate the exact farm where the cotton was grown that made the product you are wearing.

It’s not just smaller companies like Patagonia – it’s also big companies. Take, McDonald’s Canada. This video is an answer to one of the top 5 most asked questions. People said, how can it be that when I go into McDonalds and open the quarter pounder box the product looks so different from what I see in the advertising?

This video actually explains why. It talks about how the ingredients are being pushed to the front because otherwise you wouldn’t know they were there…it makes clear that all the ingredients are the same ones. And it says look, you want your food to be hot, we put it in a box – and yes, it shrinks a little, but it’s the same product.

It’s a big company being totally transparent and saying we stand by our product.

So I don’t think anyone would argue that the strategies and things we do as marketers is changing dramatically…

..but the interesting thing is, if you look at how we are organized, our structures, hierarchies, and so forth have not changed.

And this is a hot, hot potato, because where digital started as a channel or media choice, it very quickly became a marketing topic because you could use it to change your marketing mix…

So now what we’re seeing is that digital is going all the way up to the board room.

Big questions are being asked of marketing leaders of today.

Questions that are as fundamental as: What business are we in? Why do we exist? And how do we build our organization?

These are questions that you used to ask only once a decade – and now, it’s literally on a daily basis that some categories are being challenged with them.

And that’s why we started Marketing2020

I’m going to lace this presentation with some of the data points from Marketing2020, but I want to make sure that everyone knows that this was a big initiative, and I’m just here to represent it.

Yes, we led it as Vermeer, but we did so in partnership with the ANA, SpencerStuart, Forbes, and Adobe.

We literally went out and interviewed about 250 CEO’s & CMO’s worldwide…

And then we went quant, and over 10K marketers all over the world participated

I’m going to highlight some of the key findings, but if you want the details, they can be found in the July/August issue of HBR

Basically, we end Marketing2020 with a framework for Marketing Effectiveness. The framework talks about how you inspire the organization, how you create focus, but also how do you organize.

We didn’t go into great depth though on organize – and that’s when Google came to us and asked us to go further. They asked us to find out what it is about the organization that makes people win.

We went way beyond just imagining what a new organigram should be.

We started with identifying the winners. Many of you will know BrandZ, it’s the biggest data base of brand equity. It actually identifies the top 100 brands every year.

Then we went further and talked to a lot of people who are responsible for thinking through what the evolution of the organization needs to be around digital

So what did they talk to us about? Let’s start with the opportunities and challenges.

We have had so much consumer empowerment through digital – now what marketers are talking about is that their job is being made easier by technology.

BIG INSIGHTS: People talk about big insights more than big data. The tools are now there for analysis ENABLING TECHNOLOGY: And marketers really believe that technology is now enabling them to do their jobs better MILLENNIALS: That group we always talked about Generation Y – guess what, they are entering the work force and able to help companies figure out the change PROGRAMMATIC MEDIA: And some of the marketing and media jobs that were really redundant are being taken over by robots, literally. Better, cheaper, and faster.

But there are some big challenges:

DOING MORE WITH LESS: The first thing is – some idiot told the CEO and CFO that social media was free. Well, I don’t think I have to you that there are a lot of new touch-points to manage. TOUCH-POINT CONSISTENCY: Then you need consistency across those touch-points. We know it’s necessary… INTERNAL SILOS: …but when you look into the organization, there are all these silos that don’t want to talk to each other. How do I get e-commerce and marketing to talk to each other? PRIVACY: And then there is that paramount fear that will hit the headlines. Yes I like personalization …. but is data really safe?

Fundamentally when you ask them about organizations – it’s about how do I move this huge ship I’m on in the right direction?

Well that’s why we looked at the winners and what makes them different. Before I go into the framework that I hope will be helpful, I want to talk about some big differences.

The first is that winners don’t actually talk about digital anymore…

…They talk about marketing in a digital age.

They don’t talk about hand-offs – no hand-offs between agency and client, between one department and another…

And winners aren’t obsessed with what the new structure looks like, and what the new titles in the boxes are…

They think in a holistic fashion.

Yes there is a people component, there is a structure component, there is a very important part around how do we change the processes, and what are the tools we need to give people success. And all of those work in service of the strategy we are trying to serve.

This holistic approach is the framework we are trying to offer up.

Let’s go into these a little bit, starting with People.

There is a war on talent between the CPGs and a new pool of companies like Google who are fighting for that same talent.

The first thing that becomes very clear is that this isn’t just about people – it’s about the culture that prevails in the organization. Every leader we spoke to talked about leaping into a cultural change.

Take ABI – ABI has created a beer garage in SF where the company experiments with innovation, discovers and collaborates with start-ups, and learns new digital marketing tools.

Or Virgin Media – where they said that this is changing so fast that we need to stay curious enough to see the next thing company. They built a whole value system around curiosity.

And risk.

Adidas has said we will not win if we don’t take more risks – if we aren’t all in. Literally, it’s written into their strategy documents.

And it starts at the top.

Dana Anderson used to be the head of communications at Mondelez. Two weeks ago, Mondelez said, even better, you’re CMO. If you know her, this is a kooky lady – you can tell from the pictures, she likes challenging the system. But the fact that they made her the CMO, that sets the tone for the culture they promote and believe in at Mondelez.

What about this? Apple, suddenly hiring the Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts. Think of the effect of saying – we are actually not just about technology, we are about status and style. We need to learn that so we will bring someone who is the best at that into our firm.

It’s not just at the top. Take this example from Coca Cola for their digital magazine the Coca Cola Journey. Now that Content marketing is so important, Coke is looking for content writers – they’re looking for journalists, at Coke.

But once you get people in, companies are not shy about asking for commitment.

Literally after experiencing their first company raining, all employees are actually offered a check to leave for one month’s salary.

If you’re not true to our purpose, if you are not fully committed to our culture, we would rather you leave.

I talked a little bit about Millennials already. I want to share a statistic from the Agency2020 research here. Over-performers dramatically over achieve in developing and retaining Millennials.

So what does it take to motivate millennials?

Well, they want to make an impact, but they also realize that they need mentorship. L’Oreal has a great program called Digital for All that provides learning opportunities to Millennials and also puts them in the driver’s seat for reverse mentoring. They provide mentorship, and they make that clear from the start.

http://www.loreal.com/careers/what-we-offer/career-development.aspx

They are all about networking and collaboration – and far less about the hierarchy of how things work.

This is another Mondelez example where they have this concept called Fly Garage. Fly Garage is an innovation incubator that partners brand teams, agency leaders, and general creative types from outside the industry to collaborate and brainstorm new ideas.

This is what Millennials love.

And transparency.

DropBox understands this and has a Facebook page called Life Inside DropBox, dedicated to sharing pictures and stories of what is happening inside the firm.

There are very few companies that have this level of transparency, but that’s what Millennials want if they are coming into your firm.

And they realize that they don’t know everything. They realize they are natives but know little or nothing about business. Having a training program is very motivating to Millennials. As you see here, over-performers highly over achieve.

For people there are some key points. It’s not just about the people – it’s about the culture they and you drive. It is indeed about thinking differently about the type of talent you bring in. and then remember, it’s all changing – so it’s about the continuous development of everyone.

So let me go into the second part which is the structure – what did we learn from the winners about structural changes.

I know when Angela Anhrents joined Burberry she found silos. In the past, Burberrry worked with silos organized by category – with every department working independently. As a result, the brand looked all over the place.

The big change that they made was that former CEO Angela Ahrendts put all departments under one Chief Creative Officer, Christopher Bailey. He became the brand architect, responsible for driving consistency and seamless experience…

Now Burberry is the textbook example of it doesn’t matter where you interact with the brand – online, in store with an assistant who has an iPad – it’s all integrated. It feels like one.

The Burberry voice, look and feel, and tone is one. And you need that consistency. You may have to restructure to hard fit that into the organization.

And it takes a lot of collaboration between Marketing and other disciplines.

This is another statistic from the Marketing2020 work. What you see here is that in every case when marketing collaborated closely with IT, HR, or Finance, the company was over-performing.

You are the guys who need to make the bridges with disciplines around you.

And very often, layers are being slashed away – it’s very often about thinking through where the decision making is taking place.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh recently accounted that by the end of 2014 he is planning some major structural changes that will enable a flatter operating model with no job titles or managers.

I talked about new talent but there is something about new roles. Who is a marketer – what is the marketer of the future?

What we see is that there are three slightly different profiles – I think they are different people but they are all marketing. They all need to be together for marketing to succeed.

There’s the THINK marketers– these are the analysts, the market researchers of before. They were on another floor – what we see is that winners are brining them in. if you’re an analyst, you’re marketing. We need to see trends earlier, we need to understand that if when we are doing something in social and digital that is working, we need to be able to iterate.

There are FEEL marketers who are all about understanding community. Whether that’s horny teenagers for Axe or working mothers for Mondelez – it’s about stakeholders who represent that group inside the firm who are in charge of communication with that community of interest outside the firm.

And there’s a lot about DO. Because in a 24-7, 365 economy, you need so much content that there are few people who want to outsource all of that to their agency.

Marketing leadership becomes much more orchestrating teams just in time for the project. Rather than designing new boxes, it’s about getting the right strengths and mixing them for different projects.

It’s about new titles. This is straight from a Nike HR website where they are recruiting. I can’t pronounce some of the titles of these marketing roles! But Nike considers them to be marketers.

At a more structural level, organizations like Unilever are moving away from centers of excellence. They used to have one COE in London.

And there has been a shift to many COEs located at local marketes. It’s a shift to communities across the globe where digital is immersed in the broader business and dispersed globally.

You see changes too in how winning organizations work with their agencies.

Marketing2020 shows us that the companies that work with more than 5 agencies actually out perform the companeis that work with fewer agencies. It’s just not credible anymore that all this expertise is in one agency.

And by the way, the agencies understand it – because the successful ones are coming with networked solutions.

Whether it’s for Detroit, Nestle, Colgate…they are brining together networks of their own expertise within the group so that the client doesn’t have to go shopping around.

But companies like Unilever are also opening the door to enable flagship brands to partner with start ups – saying, look if you’ve got a technology idea that one of our brands could use…we want to know about you.

Or Coca-Cola Enterprises, one of the largest Coke bottlers, who launched a new site for developers to simplify access to its APIs. The company hopes that a more open and easily accessible ecosystem allow for the development of more innovative apps by third-party developers.

Nike brings tech start ups into the Fuel Lab – a permanent collaborative work and testing space in San Francisco. Partners are not seen as competitors – rather collaborators in pursuit of a shared mission to serve athletes.

Thinking much more about networked – networked across functions, networked just in time teams, and networked partnerships, because we do not have the answers alone.

So what about the processes?

Everyone knows the Real Beauty campaign. It’s been going for over 12 years – and why has it been so successful?

Because about 12 years ago, people form all over the world came together in a room and wrote a strategy on 1 single page.

That strategic clarity allowed all the things we see now to happen.

When you have that strategic clarity, you can be like Red Bull where they have 3 guidelines for everything they do.

They just say – is it cool, is it something no other brand would do, and will people talk about it.

If yes, go do it. The clarity of the strategy allows empowerment in the rest of the markets and among the marketers.

And the cycle is going so much faster.

Like Heineken, where decision making cycles are based on the activities’ needs. The planning cycle for TV buying may be monthly but for Facebook, it needs to be daily. Or, for its football app, it needs to be in real time so that the app can be synched up with the live game

And Coke, they have instituted a rule where if you send something out for approval and you don’t hear within 24 hours….it’s approved. Now that’s smart. Post mortem review can be done after the fact to ensure guardrails are being met.

Oreo – we all know the example at the Superbowl. It was only possible because they pushed the decision making down and the war room was able to act immediately.

Now sometimes you have to ready to help. Real Beauty sketches by Dove – that went viral. But Unilever was smart – they helped it go vial.

And you need legal.

I don’t know if you know about this – but this is Tina Fey. And look how she is using her American Express card. It’s actually the wrong way around – the strip is there. They apparently all do that. But otherwise you can’t read the logo.

What happened immediately online was some kind of little shit storm around how stupid that was. American Express was able to react immediately because the lawyers were in the room and they’re working in full partnership with the marketing team.

So on processes, it is about very simple guardrails around an extremely insight and strategy. And then pushing that decision making down. And shortening approval cycles.

But there’s one more thing – the tools. Because if everything is changing, how do we get people to collaborate.

Well, it’s literally about ripping up the walls.

Ikea brought different functions all to the same table at its US Headquarters. In fact, Ikea built flexibility into the work space – desks at Ikea can be moved and reconfigured.

If they are not at the same table, they’re not talking. It’s about hard coding that into the organization.

And forcing communication, communication, communication.

We talked to everyone – some people use Chatter, Yammer, Facebook messenger.

It’s challenging if that’s not how you grew up. I didn’t – I like email – my daughter sends me messages and I’m like can you just send me an email.

Forcing communication is key and paramount here.

And capturing what works.

Chipotle literally has a roadmap of what it takes to be a crew member all the way up to a restaurateur.

It’s about capturing what works along the way and sharing those guidelines.

Because if you can activate all your employees as ambassadors, imagine the effect.

We know with companies like TOMS that is possible…

But you probably don’t know that companies like Ford are literally publishing their policies saying that they want employees to speak on behalf of the company.

The company recognizes that the employees are key brand builders. It takes a lot of work just to make that clear.

It’s about hard coding the collaboration.

It’s about communicating – force people to communicate, institute communication around what works and doesn’t. It’s about trying, learning, and trying again.

Then capture that and help the people who you work with to become the best ambassadors for your brand.

I hope that some of those examples maybe you can take home – but what can you do tomorrow?

The first is – bring different people into the company. People who don’t understand why you hired them. Because that’s change, right away.

Then, look for the roles. If you can pronounce all the roles in your marketing department, you’ve got a problem. Use that as an acid test. Have you got ones that you cannot pronounce.

Train, train, train.

And guess what – start with yourself.

Here’s the last statistic I want to show. Senior management understands social and digital marketing. 71% among the winning companies and under 50% among the underperformers.

After this presentation, are you pulling your team into a room and saying – listen to what I learned? Are you leading by example?

And lastly, think holistic. Start with that strategy and think about the people, structure, processes, and tools holistically – because they really do have to go together.

Millward brown vermeer organizational design think brand 2014 snf

1.
Organizing for the
Marketing Team to
Succeed in a Digital Age
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Marc de Swaan Arons
Chief Marketing Officer, MB Vermeer

24.
We focused on learning from the winners
Google Confidential and Proprietary
PUBLISHED BY
The most robust and reliable
global brand ranking
50,000 brands, 30 countries, and
1.5 million people
Includes predictive metrics